1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the electronic transfer of document images, for example, between banks and more specifically to a method and apparatus for providing quality assurance of an electronically transferable image data file and associated image tag file of a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,221,830 by Kern and assigned to the present assignee, a very common activity within a bank involves the processing of deposits made by the bank""s customers. A customer is typically one who has a checking account at the bank and, from time-to-time, makes a deposit for the purpose of depositing to his/her account one or more checks, which the customer has received from others. These checks may be drawn on the same bank (On-us checks) or on other banks. FIG. 1 illustrates the front side of a typical check 10.
In order to make a deposit, a customer ordinarily fills out a deposit ticket listing the amount of each check to be deposited, and the total of all checks. A deposit ticket has a code line similar to the code line 12 provided at the bottom of the front side of check 10. This code line is typically both humanly-readable and machine-readable. It contains information which the bank uses for processing, such as the bank on which the document is drawn, a routing/transit number, the account number of the person who wrote or made out the check or deposit ticket, and often a transaction code indicating the presence of a bank""s internal document. Code line 12 is usually comprised of well-known MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) data, but may alternatively be OCR (Optical Character Recognition) data. For convenience, it will be assumed for the remainder of this description that the code line contains MICR data.
A bank receives deposit tickets and associated checks for further processing from a variety of sources, such as from the bank""s tellers, through-the-mail, and from automated teller machines. When the transaction is made at a teller window, the customer may also choose to receive a certain amount of cash. In such a case, the teller will then include with the check(s) and deposit ticket of the transaction, and a cash paid out slip for the corresponding cash amount. This cash paid out slip also contains a MICR code line.
Instead of receiving cash, the customer might wish to deposit cash into his account, in which case the customer would enter the appropriate amount onto the deposit ticket. The teller would then include with the check(s) and deposit slip of the transaction, a cash paid in slip, which would be generally similar to the cash paid out slip, except that it would designate cash paid in instead of cash paid out.
The deposit ticket along with its associated checks 10, and any cash paid in or paid out slips constitute a transaction. Other documents, such as mortgage and credit card payments could also be included in a transaction. Assuming no errors have been made, the xe2x80x9cNET DEPOSITxe2x80x9d line on the front side of the deposit ticket should equal the algebraic sum of the associated check amounts and any cash paid in or paid out amount, and also the amounts of any other types of transaction items. When this equality is present, the transaction is said to be xe2x80x9cbalanced.xe2x80x9d
It will be appreciated that a bank is required to process large quantities of transactions, such as described above, every working day for its internal accounts and to send out checks drawn on other banks for collection. To make this process more efficient, current banking practices require that MICR data be placed on each check.
This MICR data 12 is placed in the MICR print band which is a horizontal band near the bottom of the check. The details of the MICR line are shown in FIG. 2. An external processing code EPC field 20, shown in field position 44, contains information for outside processors of the check. The field immediately to the right of the EPC field is routing field 22. This field is in positions 33-43 and contains the routing number of the drawee institution. The field to the right of the routing field is the on-us field 24. This field, in positions 14-31, is reserved for use by the drawee institution and normally contains the maker""s account number. On personal size checks, this field also contains the check number and may also contain processing code information unique to the drawee institution.
The right-most field in the MICR line is the amount field 26 in positions 2-11. This field is left blank until it is completed by the institution of first deposit. When the check first enters the banking system, the amount is encoded using the information obtained from the convenience amount field and amount in words.
There are field code symbols on the ends of each field and blank spaces in a number of locations throughout the fields. For example, the routing field is bounded by transit symbols, and the amount field is bounded by amount symbols.
The contents of the MICR line are controlled by the drawee institution following rules established for the high speed processing of checks provided in The American National Standard for Financial Services X9.13, Placement and Location of Magnetic Ink Printing (MICR). Adherence to these rules is required to enable rapid clearing of documents between financial institutions. A key portion of the definition of the structure and content of the fields in the MICR line (provided in ANSI Standard X9.13) is associated with the routing and amount fields. The numeric contents of the routing field indicate the drawee financial institution, and consists of two groups of four digits, followed by a Mod 10 check digit. The numeric contents of the amount field indicate the value of the check in cents.
It will be appreciated that once a bank has processed a large quantity of transactions, such as described above, the bank needs to send out checks drawn on other banks for collection. To send checks to another bank, one way is to first generate an electronic check presentment (ECP) file, which contains a listing of MICR code lines and check amounts and other data for every check that is payable at the transit bank. This file is sent by electronic means as an advance information file in order to protect against fraud and reduce check float. A short time after the ECP file has been sent electronically, the paper checks corresponding to all items in the ECP file are then physically sent.
To make this process more efficient and less costly it would be desirable to be able to digitize or image the transit paper checks creating a compressed image electronic file and transmit the electronic file to the receiving bank. One problem is assuring that the quality, i.e. the integrity, of the data is maintained during generation of the file and transmission to the receiving bank. Several problems may occur with such a file:
a) The image data becomes disassociated with its specific image header data containing the image tags.
b) The compressed image data is corrupted.
c) The compressed image is truncated at its lower boundary, which is the most likely place for truncation if it is to occur.
d) There is poor image legibility of a check.
e) There was an undetected failure of the image camera, image processing algorithms, or image compression algorithms
It would be desirable to have a system for the imaging of paper checks or other documents where the images are assembled into an electronic file and sent to a receiving bank that would provide assurance that the problems described hereinbefore do not exist.
The invention is a method and apparatus used to provide quality assurance for the electronic transfer of document image files, for example, between banks. The documents may be, in the case of a bank, negotiable instruments, checks, deposit slips or other transactional documents. The document image file contains an image tag file and associated image data file. The image tag file contains first quality assurance data. The image data file contains second quality assurance data. The quality assurance data may be a MICR line froma the document.
A first reader extracts the first quality assurance data from the image tag file. A second reader reads the second quality assurance data from the image data file. A comparator receives the first and second sets of quality assurance data from the first and second readers and compares the first and second sets of quality assurance data to find correspondence between the data. The level of the correspondence provides an indicator of the quality of the image data file and associated image tag file data.